


Is It Still Raining Back In November?

by IAmSorry__sendmeaprompt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst and Feels, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Depressed Castiel (Supernatural), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Please Don't Hate Me, let me know if I missed a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:48:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28587474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmSorry__sendmeaprompt/pseuds/IAmSorry__sendmeaprompt
Summary: When Castiel is uprooted from the only life he's ever known and taken to a new city and a new school, forced to live in close quarters with a mother who seems to hate him, will he be able to find solace in the company of new friends? Will he even survive the year? And what does everyone think is so great about Dean Winchester, anyway?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 23
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wayward_sherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayward_sherlock/gifts).



> Title is from a Leonard Cohen song. Disclaimer: I don't own the song or the characters, just the story.
> 
> So uh  
> You wanted a HS AU and I accidentally took myself and my experiences, aged myself up a couple of years, and called myself Castiel. So. You know it'll have a happy ending eventually but he's gonna see some shit first.

Castiel was fifteen years old when he moved to Lawrence, Kansas right before his tenth grade year started. 

All of his siblings had gone away to college or already had jobs, as he was the youngest by far of them all. His mother, Naomi Novak, had decided on the day that his older brother Gabriel had left for college that she just couldn’t stay married to his father Chuck any longer, and had filed for divorce then fled.

Castiel had found all of this out approximately fifteen minutes before they were supposed to leave, when she told him to pack a bag and get a fucking move on.

He’d sat in the backseat of the car, surrounded by the boxes of things Naomi had taken with her, and watched the only home he’d ever known, along with his sadly waving father, disappear into the distance.

They were halfway there, having been in the car about three hours, when Castiel dared to ask where they were going.

“We’ll stay with my sister Amara until I can find a place to rent. Now be quiet.”

Castiel, slowly processing that, pulled out his phone. He wanted to text Gabriel, who’d always been his confidante, and make sure he knew what was going on. “Put that thing away,” Naomi snapped, “Or I’ll throw it out the window. You don’t need to be using it.”

Castiel slipped the phone back into his pocket and resigned himself to an incredibly boring drive.

***

“You’re going to run cross country,” Naomi informed him. “Not many people do it and there’s good scholarship money in it. Plus it’ll help you lose some weight.” They were sitting at his Aunt Amara’s kitchen table, debating his schedule for the classes that would be starting in four days.

“I have no interest in running cross country,” he insisted. “Besides, you’d have to get up at five-thirty to drive me every morning.”

Naomi scoffed. “Drive you? You have perfectly good legs. You can walk.”

“In the dark? In the city?” Castiel didn’t want to. He was afraid he’d get hurt, or kidnapped, or even just plain lost.

“Yes,” Naomi snapped. “Now, you’re also going to take biology, civics, economics…” Her voice faded away as Castiel let himself, for the first time, consider his new circumstances.

He was trapped in an unfamiliar city that was much larger than anywhere he was used to. He was going to be going to school with strangers, and living with his mother and Aunt Amara. His mother hadn’t been wonderful at her best, and she’d been steadily declining over the last couple of years. She was turning into a petty, vindictive woman who took every opportunity to mock and belittle Castiel, and his Aunt Amara turned a blind side to her treatment of him.

She'd demanded his phone when they’d arrived, saying she didn’t want him to contact his father. She didn't want him putting ideas in Castiel's head. Then she’d turned it off and hidden it somewhere in the room she’d claimed as hers. He was completely, totally cut off from his friends and family.

The attic where he slept was stifling hot, and the ceiling was so low and slanted that he was constantly walking around with a bruised forehead.

He was going to have to join the damn cross country team, of all things, and was being put in classes advanced enough that the ones at his smaller, more rural school back home wouldn't have been able to prepare him for in the least.

Castiel politely excused himself from the conversation as quickly as he could, hurried up the stairs to flop down on his unmade bed, and muffled the sound of his sobbing in the pillow.

“Stop bawling,” Naomi called up the stairs. “You should be grateful I’m giving you the chance to come here.”

I don't want to be here, Cas didn’t say. I never wanted to stay here. I wanted to be at home with Dad and my friends and the places I know and the college track I was on there. I don’t want to be within a hundred miles of you, _ Naomi _ , and I’d run away right now if I thought for a second I could get away with it.

“Castiel!” Naomi yelled, probably not for the first time given her volume and irritation level.

Castiel shook himself out of his funk and politely called back “Yes, ma’am?”

“Don’t you take that snarky tone with me, young man.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“That’s better. Now get down here and make dinner, your aunt and I have had a long day getting everything settled with your school and we’re hungry,”

Sighing and scrubbing the tear tracks from his cheeks with the heels of his hands, Castiel obediently clattered down the stairs and began looking around the unfamiliar kitchen for pasta. Tears welled up again, despite his best attempts to stop them, as he thought about how even cooking, something he loved to do, could be so corrupted, tainted, by Naomi’s influence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas' first day of school

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning y'all: some of this is based off of my life. The timelines re twisted, and a good bit of it is fictional, but it's the first time I've tried to do something like this. Let me know what you think!

Castiel’s first day of school began when he rolled out of bed a little after five am, grabbed his backpack, gym bag, and house key, then left the house.

His mother wasn’t awake to see him off. In fact, the lights of every house on the block were dark.

Castiel set off along the sidewalk, badly lit by a few yellow streetlights. He’d quickly figured out that Aunt Amara lived on what would probably be known as the wrong side of the railroad tracks that bisected the city, as did all the houses Naomi was considering renting. The area around them was full of vaguely ramshackle houses patched with tarps and pieces of scrap metal, and Castiel occasionally came across a used condom or syringe in the street.

He hitched his backpack further up his shoulder and scurried off down the sidewalk to the high school. It was a good thirty minute walk and he didn’t want to be late on his first day.

From some nebulous point behind him he heard the echo of faint raucous laughter, then a shrill scream.

Then a gunshot.

Castiel was almost used to the gunshots already, there was one nearly every night in their general vicinity. He privately thought that they were probably coming from the house across the street and two lots down from Aunt Amara’s place, which seemed to be a hotspot for local drug dealers.

Having determined that the gunshot wasn’t close enough to pose any real threat to him (probably), he set off on his trek once again. If that one made the papers, he'd read about it later.

***

Cross country practice wasn’t all that bad, he reflected as he stepped into the shower in the boy’s locker room. Sure, his coach had all the rage and power of hell’s minions packed into a body that barely reached five feet, and sure, Castiel felt like he was dying when he hit his fourth mile and his side started to cramp, but he’d made two new friends.

Alastair was in Castiel’s grade. He was new to the school too, but not to running. No, he had sprinted to the front of the pack and then had stayed there for the entire practice. He had a shock of bright orange hair, and what seemed to Castiel to be a rather abrasive personality. Naomi would have hated him, and that thought had spurred Castiel to go talk to the other boy. They had immediately started arguing over some trivial thing, until Alastair had laughed, a sharp, bright sound, and playfully punched Castiel’s shoulder.

Castiel decided to take that as a declaration of friendship.

His other new friend was Garth, a smaller boy who seemed to be friends with the entire team, which was quite a feat. Garth, a senior, had marched right up to Castiel after the run had been completed, held out his hand, and asked if Castiel enjoyed watching Dr. Who.

Castiel loved the show, and said as much, and apparently that was all it took for Garth to be his friend too.

The slight euphoria he was feeling after the not-complete-disaster of his first practice wore off very quickly when he entered the school proper and was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer size of it.

At his old school, he would have been graduating with a class of maybe fifty. Here, it was closer to a thousand.

The school itself was two buildings, one with a courtyard and cafeteria attached. They were both two stories tall, and each one took up an entire city block. They were connected by a sky bridge reaching from one building’s second floor to the other.

Castiel sighed and looked at his schedule, crumpled from being stored in his pocket. He had three minutes to fight through the tide of people packing every inch of the hallway to get upstairs, cross the skywalk, go down two corridors, and find his classroom.

Predictably, he was late.

There were two desks left open, at the very back of the room, and he took the one next to a boy who seemed to be asleep, slumped over his desk. He was wearing a letter jacket, which Castiel examined surreptitiously and determined to mean that the boy, whoever he was, was a very talented baseball player.

“Mr. Winchester,” their teacher snapped as he swept into the room. “Kindly wake up.”

The boy groaned and blearily opened his eyes.

“Good. Now, I am Mr. Crowley, and I will be teaching this English class. I am a harsh grader, and I expect your work to reflect your understanding of that. I do not tolerate any shenanigans.” He stood up and began distributing a class syllabus, then returned to his position at the front of the room.

“You,” he said, pointing directly at Castiel. “You did the summer reading, correct?”

“Uh,” Castiel stammered. “I- I just moved here, and I didn’t know, and-”

Mr. Crowley hmphed. “Well. It was  _ Lord of the Flies, _ and you should have read it.”

Castiel had read that, years ago. Maybe he could remember some of it.

“What is the key observation we should make about Simon’s character?”

Castiel scrunched up his forehead, trying to remember. “Uh, he was kind of the peacemaker. He stayed kind, all the time, so I guess it’s an observation about kindness despite one’s surroundings?” He thought it was a pretty good guess; he’d always been fascinated with the character and so had remembered him fairly well.

“No,” Mr. Crowley said. “Are you daft? It’s that he’s a Jesus figure. Please, somebody, tell me one of you picked up on that.”

All around the room, heads nodded and agreements were murmured. Castiel sank lower in his desk. He felt his face flushing red, and rather wished he could fall through the floor.

Then again, falling through the floor would put him smack in the middle of a biology lab, so maybe he shouldn’t do that.

His train of thought was completely disrupted when the Winchester boy used his foot to give Castiel’s shoe a silent, friendly nudge.

What did that mean? Was it a comforting touch? A reassurance? Or, most likely, an accident? Castiel didn’t know.

He felt like he didn’t know anything, like he was drowning under the weight of all the changes he was expected to process, and moved through the rest of the day in a sort of dreamlike trance, alone with his aching legs in his own little bubble.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We've gotten past the introduction to Castiel's life, now let's get to the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It will get better after this I promise.

Castiel floated through his first semester in that little bubble. The days and nights all blurred together as he withdrew further and further into himself, and he really only processed a few snippets of each day.

Dean Winchester flashing him a bright smile in the hallway as Castiel rushed past with his head down, tears blurring his eyes as he clutched his first grade report.

Dean’s brother Sam plopping down across from him in the library where Castiel retreated during every lunchtime, and tenaciously making friendly advances until Castiel gave in and talked to him.

Alastair consistently drawing him into increasingly angry and violent arguments, Castiel being unhappily thrilled about their spats because it was the only time he actually felt something.

Mr. Crowley asking the class during their first active shooter drill if anyone was willing to stay behind as the class fled out the window, to help him tip his giant metal filing cabinet over in front of the door to buy them some time, and Castiel immediately volunteering, realizing in that moment that he really didn’t care if he lived or died.

That occurrence, in early October, snapped him out of the funk he was in and threw him violently into a period of stark despair and hyperawareness of his surroundings, and Castiel’s true journey through high school began.

***

His friendship with Sam and Dean grew even as his altercations with Alastair became more and more violent, and his mother’s disdain for his general existence increased. It all came to a head in his second semester, on the day of the Multicultural Festival.

The school put on the Multicultural Festival every year, the languages department going above and beyond to create an immersive experience into different cultures for students and their families throughout the day. Castiel had been tasked with making a Brazilian fish stew, and had spent quite some time making Friday night so he could take it to the Festival early Saturday morning, where he would be manning a booth on Brazil all day.

The day started, for him, at four in the morning, when he jerked awake out of a nightmare. He sat bolt upright in bed, panting, and tried to regulate his breathing so he wouldn’t have a panic attack.

_ Just being in the same house as Naomi made him feel like he was suffocating. Since Aunt Amara had kicked them out, the small house they were renting was filled with just him and Naomi, and her presence was overwhelming. _

_ Castiel couldn’t sleep well at night knowing that Naomi and her increasingly insane mind were just two rooms away, not knowing when she’d pop into his room and start screaming at him for some imagined slight.  _

_ After some quick finagling, he managed to scrape the layers of paint away from the latch on his window and slither out of it to drop lightly onto the gravel drive below. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t stay in the same house as that looming threat, so he may as well spend his nights running, training for Cross Country. _

_ He was heading down an alleyway a mile or so away from the house, trying to stay off of populated roads, when it happened. He turned a corner and came face-to-face with what was obviously a fight between rival gangs about to happen. _

_ There were probably eight to fifteen people in the alleyway, his panicked brain told him, and none of them looked very happy to see him. Then he met the eyes of one of the men there and realized that he knew who that was - they had Spanish class together. _

_ “Don’t let him get away,” one of them shouted, then something that may have been “He’s seen too much.” _

_ Castiel spun on his heel to try to back up, but they were closing in behind him. A handgun glinted in the yellow light from the streetlamp. _

_ His only chance was to speed through the group right in front of him, duck down a connecting alley ,and hope like hell he could lose them in the maze of industrial buildings surrounding the train tracks. _

_ He took off sprinting, slipping between people and deftly dodging hands that reached out to grab him. He was almost to the alley he needed to turn down when he felt a sharp, icy pain in his hip.  _

_ He let out a stifled noise of pain and kept running, limping, the adrenaline pumping through his veins the only thing keeping him upright. _

_ He turned a corner, then another, then another, and the shouts of those pursuing him gradually faded away. Seeing a ladder, probably part of a fire escape, on the side of a building, he hauled himself up it and perched there until he was certain his pursuers had vanished. _

_ Then he looked down and yanked the pocketknife that was embedded in his hip out. _

_ He limped home, blood coursing down his leg, staining his shorts, soaking into his sock and shoe, leaving a gruesome trail behind him. _

_ He clambered back in his window, leaving smears of blood on the sill. He stumbled to the bathroom, brain swimming in a pain-filled haze, barely able to stay upright. He washed and sterilized the cut - it wasn’t wide, but it was deep, and he could already feel that there was nerve damage. The part of his hip that wasn’t burning in pain was totally numb. _

_ Then he retreated back to his room, pulled the travel sewing kit he’d gotten in Home Ec out of his backpack, bit down on his leather belt as hard as he could, and stitched himself up. _

Sitting in bed relieving the nightmare, Castiel carefully pulled back the gauze dressing covering his hip.

It wasn’t infected; good. If it was infected he might have to tell Naomi, and he dreaded the thought of what she would do to him if she knew he’d been so careless, so disobedient. She might kick him out, throw him out the door and tell him to never come back to her house. Again. It had been a couple of months since that last happened, and he had no desire to repeat the experience.

He dragged himself out of bed, wincing at the twinge of the damaged nerves under his ravaged skin, and began to dress. He had to be at the festival by nine with the soup to meet up with Dean, who was running the booth next to him and with whom he had collaborated on multiple projects for the whole thing.

When he reached the kitchen, going in search of something to eat, he was surprised to find Naomi sitting at the kitchen table, apparently waiting for him.

His stomach sank like a stone. This couldn’t be good.

“Castiel,” she said calmly. “Did you try to contact your father?”

He had. In a moment of weakness, he’d crept into her room while she was sleeping, found where she’d hidden his phone, and sent out a desperate text message to the man begging him to let Castiel come home, to get him away from Naomi.

Should he confess? She’d go easier on him if he did, but then again. He’d deleted any evidence of the thing having been sent.

“I just got a phone call from him, wondering if everything was okay.” Shit. That would do it. He’d told the man in his message not to talk to Naomi about it, he knew she’d lie- “I told him it was all fine and you were just overreacting. Now. Did you or did you not sneak into my room, steal your phone, and attempt to contact someone I have told you you aren’t allowed to talk to?”

“Y-yes. I’m sorry.” He bowed his head and shuffled his feet. His hip throbbed in sympathy.

“Well. Sorry just doesn’t cut it. You say sorry all the time Castiel, but you never act any different. You know what that is? That’s called gaslighting, and it’s very hurtful to me.”

Castiel wanted so badly to argue, wanted to scream and flail at her until she understood how much her words hurt him, but the last time he’d done that she’d advanced on him until he was pressed up against the kitchen cabinet, stood on his toes, and screamed inches away from his face, hitting him with a table mat until he’d been begging for forgiveness.

He kept his mouth shut.

“So,” she mused, looking much too pleased with herself. “What’s a fitting punishment for lying, sneaking, stealing, and gaslighting me? Hmmm.”

Castiel hunched in, trying to make himself seem smaller. Naomi had a multitude of pens, kitchen utensils, and other small things near to hand that she could throw at him if she so chose.

“You’re grounded,” she told him. “Until I say otherwise. Now go back to your room.”

“But the Festival,” he said, his voice small and shaking. He knew not to question her, he knew that would just make everything worse, but the Festival was important.

“No Festival. Maybe next time you’ll think more about the consequences of disobedience. Actions have consequences, Castiel.”

“The Festival is worth thirty percent of my grade in Spanish class! Please, I have to go!”

“I don’t like doing this to you, Castiel,” she said, the tiny, satisfied smile playing on her lips contradicting the sugary sweet words. “But you need to learn. Now get back in your room.”

Castiel slunk back into his room, barely holding back tears.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets marginally better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo this is a short one but I just can't be nice to Cas yet

It took Castiel until four that afternoon to break.

He spent an hour pacing, venting all of his pent-up frustration at the unfairness of the punishment, until his hip reminded him that he really shouldn’t be moving at all; it was bad enough that he’d kept running on the Cross Country team every morning.

Then he’d sat cross-legged on the floor and done as much of his homework as he could. A lot of it was assigned over Google Classroom, and since he wasn’t allowed access to his phone or the computer at home, he could only do those assignments at school. He wasn’t allowed to tell the school he didn’t have access to the platform at home, so he could really only do his work for Biology.

Castiel hated Biology. He hated the textbook, he hated the subject matter, and he hated having to learn any of it.

He did not plan on pursuing a career in the life sciences.

Biology kept him occupied and added to his rising frustration for another two hours, and eventually Castiel fell asleep on the floor, awkwardly curled around his notebook.

Then he popped up and started pacing again.

***

He was lying on his bed, his hip throbbing angrily. He was hungry, he was thirsty, he was so damned tired.

He was tired of putting up with Naomi. Tired of letting her dictate his life, tired of being subject to her whims and her punishments. He had to do something. He had to leave.

Cautiously, he poked his head out his bedroom door, knowing that if she saw him he’d be in a hell of a lot more trouble, but all was clear. Naomi was asleep on the couch, her head tipped back on the cushions, snoring loudly.

He was in the clear.

He debated trying to retrieve his phone from her room, but decided walking across the squeaky linoleum might wake her up, and he didn’t want to risk that. He couldn’t go out the door because of the alarm system, so he retreated back into his room, closed the door, and started quietly working the uncooperative window open.

The warped, wooden frame squeaked up and he caught his breath, listening to see if she would wake up.

She snorted in her sleep and settled back down, and Castiel breathed a sigh of relief. Then he popped the screen back out, slithered over the windowsill, popping one of his stitches in the process, set the window back up normally, and took off as fast as he could.

**(A/N: From this point on, it deviates from my life completely and is, once again, a work of fiction. I made the mistake of running to the church where she had friends, and was promptly returned to her. Castiel is luckier.)**

He stumbled up to the high school around five, just as the Multicultural Festival was ending. He took a moment to catch his breath and calm his spinning head - he hadn’t eaten all day and was starting to get dizzy.

With jumbled half-excuses floating around his head, panicked explanations he hoped his teacher would accept, he tugged open the gate to the courtyard where the booths had been set up and stumbled to a stop in front of Dean Winchester, who was carrying a box full of clay figurines.

“Jesus, Cas,” he said, and set the box down, and the floodgates opened up. 

“I’m sorry,” Castiel babbled, “I’m so sorry, I tried so hard to come, Dean, please, I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, whoa,” Dean soothed, “I’m not mad at you, dude, I was kinda worried- Cas? Cas, are you okay?”

Cas squeezed his eyes shut, blinking hard, in the hope that it would dispel the purple and black flecks dancing in his vision. Dimly, he registered that the popped stitch hurt and there was blood soaking through his jeans.

“Cas!” He knew Dean’s voice should have been loud, but it sounded like the other boy was yelling at him from a distance, and Castiel swayed on his feet.

Then he was being caught in strong arms and tugged out of the school courtyard. Dean was leading him toward Dean’s car.

As soon as he was in the seat, Castiel passed out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don;t even know anymore I have been awake for far too long and am in full self destruct mode

He woke up in Dean’s arms, which was a very confusing and surprising experience. “Dean?” he murmured, tucking his face closer to Dean’s collar.

“Jesus, Cas,” Dean said, hugging him closer. “You scared me to death.” Then he shifted his hold on Castiel and started up the front steps to what must have been Dean’s house. “Mom!” he yelled, shouldering the bright green front door open, and a vague clattering arose from deeper in the house.

Castiel tried to squirm around to see what was going on, still not entirely sure how he ended up where he was. Unfortunately, the movement pulled at his hip, sending a sickening shock of pain through him, and he passed out again.

***

“Dean,” his mother inquired, moving into the sitting room where he was standing with a limp Cas in his arms. She dried her hands on the dish towel she was carrying, and then looked up and took in the scene in front of her. “Oh my god, Dean!”

“Hey, Mom. This is Cas, you remember I told you about him?” Dean shifted Cas in his arms, hoping his mother would tell him what to do soon. He was pretty much completely out of his depth.

“He’s - He’s unconscious.” She moved closer, her hands hovering anxiously over Cas’ pale face. 

“He’s also bleeding, Mom, so can we please do something?”

“Right, yes,” she said, gathering her wits about her. “Take him into the guest bedroom and find out where the blood is coming from. I’m going to get the first aid kit.”

Dean carefully carried Cas down the hallway, making sure not to bump his head on anything, and lay him gently down on the guest bed. One of Cas’ legs was streaked with blood, so Dean eased his jeans down over his hips, gasping when he saw the gash along Cas’ hip.

It had been stitched up, with what was obviously everyday needle and thread, no surgical supplies here. Cas must have done it himself.

Three of the stitches were torn, and the cut was bleeding sluggishly.

His fingers skated over the heated skin surrounding the cut, and Cas jerked compulsively on the bed. “Please,” he murmured, “Please, Naomi-”

Dean was relieved when his mother bustled back into the room and took over, because he just didn’t know what to do.

***

Cas woke up in a room he didn’t recognize, snuggled up against a warm chest.

He promptly panicked and flailed, sending shooting pain stabbing through his hip, which caused him to flail more.

“Hey, whoa, easy,” said his pillow, in a surprised tone.

“Dean?”

“Um, yeah. How are you feeling? Do you want some water?” Dean shifted so that he was sitting up, and Cas noticed that he was fully clothed and lying across the top of the blankets.

“Where am I?” Cas’ mouth tasted dry, and he gratefully accepted the glass of water from the bedside table that Dean handed him.

“You’re at my place. Cas, what happened to you?”

So, cuddled up to his friend, Cas told Dean everything. 

Partway through his story, Dean’s mother came into the room to quietly sit and listen, tears shimmering in her eyes.

When he finished, she reached out and drew him into a motherly hug. “Oh sweetheart,” she said, stroking his hair softly. “You’re gonna be alright, yeah? We did notify the police when you were unconscious, so now that you’re awake they’ll probably want to talk to you. Do you feel up to that?”

Cas said he did.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i honestly dont know where I'm going with this or why i started it even so

He was there, tightly holding Dean’s hand, when two cop cars pulled up to the little blue house he’d just recently escaped from.

The officials he’d talked to had wanted him to go directly to the hospital for his hip, but he had insisted on accompanying them to see Naomi. He needed the closure.

He sat in the back of Mary Winchester’s minivan, woozy from pain meds, his cheek against the scratchy seat as he looked out the window at the house that had held so much of his pain.

Dean squeezed his hand, offering wordless support. Cas pointed out his window, the trail of blood drying on the sill visible from the driveway.

In the driver’s seat, Mary let out a low curse and twisted around, soothingly patting Cas’ knee, her eyes full of sympathy.

Cas drifted in a medicated haze as the policemen got out of their cars, one letting out a small  _ whoop _ of their siren that made him giggle.

They walked up to the door, knocked, waited. One shifted on his feet, the gravel underneath him moving. Naomi didn’t answer the door.

“Police! Open up, we have a warrant!” one called, banging on the door.

Shortly after that, Castiel had the immense satisfaction of watching the door that had locked in front of his nose trapping him inside so many times be broken down, the cops rushing inside with their guns drawn.

The neighbors were standing on their front porches and in their tiny yards, peering out of windows and making soft murmuring noises amongst themselves. That, more than anything, he thought, would hurt Naomi, with her fierce pride and dedication to cultivating her public image.

She was dragged out of the house in handcuffs, twisting and screaming, spitting at the officers holding her back. The neighbors laughed, pointing, snapping pictures.

Cas felt a certain vindictive glee at the thought of Naomi’s shame being spread across social media.

He felt the exact moment her lazer gaze landed on him through the window of the van, and she tore away from the officers, running at him, screaming something unintelligible, and he flinched away, burying his face in Dean’s gentle hug.

He didn’t look up again until Naomi had been shoved into the police car and carted off to the station.

***

He stayed with Dean for four days, until his father got time off work and drove to Lawrence to get him.

The car ride was awkward at first, Chuck not knowing how to cope with this pale shadow of his son. Cas dozed in the seat, the throbbing in his hip nearly gone thanks to the heavy stuff the hospital had sent him off with a prescription for. Then Cas had woken up from a daze and sleepily asked if he could have some beef jerky.

Chuck had given a slightly maniacal laugh and agreed instantly, pulling into a gas station and coming back with Krave Chipotle jerky, Cas’ favorite. He’d remembered.

Cas broke down then, sobbing into the bag of jerky, pulling his father into a hug over the car’s center console, blabbering out some crazed string of words about how he’d  _ remembered, _ he’d  _ known, _ thank you so  _ so much. _

Chuck had patted his back and hugged him, then extracted himself and kept driving, a small smile on his face.

***

Cas didn’t really realize how much Naomi had screwed him up until he got into a house where he didn’t have to tiptoe, didn’t have to flinch away, didn’t have to worry about what was going to happen next every second of every day.

Chuck tried his best, he really did, and he meant well, but he wasn’t equipped to deal with a traumatized Castiel.

When he pulled a cast iron skillet out of the cupboard to make eggs, he wasn’t prepared for Cas to flinch away, expecting to be smacked with the cookware.

When Cas woke him and the cats and the dog, every inhabitant of the house, with frantic, frenzied screaming in his sleep, Chuck rushed to his room and held him, rocking him back and forth like he had when the boy was only a baby, but he couldn’t take the nightmares away.

When Cas flinched away from nothing, his hands flying up to cover his face, imagining that he heard Naomi screaming at him, Chuck couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly, murmuring soothing words, until Cas calmed down.

Chuck loved his son, though, like Naomi never had, and he was determined to get him help, so he scheduled a visit with a psychologist.

The report they got back had a laundry list of ailments. CPTSD, anxiety, depression, seasonal depression, and so on. When asked, Cas said he wanted to be medicated, so Chuck made arrangements. When asked, Cas said he wanted to talk to a therapist, so Chuck made arrangements.

When Cas said he just wanted a hug, Chuck obliged, and so they went on through life, Chuck’s quiet support and the access to the resources he needed helping Cas, slowly but surely, to heal.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yep were done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy fuck finally idek whats happening here anymore

*years later*

Cas hitched his bag up onto his shoulder, taking a deep breath. It was the first day of classes at the University of Kansas, and he was totally, completely prepared for it.

He was double majoring in criminal justice and psychology. He was gonna help kids who were in situations like he’d been in.

He’s moved into the dorms a week before, and spent most of his time reading his textbooks, frantically organizing his notes, and getting to know his roommate, a young man named Kevin who was, if possible, even more tense about the start of classes than Castiel was.

He walked into his ten o’clock class, Intro to Psych, about ten minutes early.

The class was held in a giant lecture hall, currently silent and empty. At the front stood a podium and a projection screen, and Cas edged toward the back of the room, ascending the sloped floor, then carefully selected a seat from which he could see everything.

He pulled out his laptop and opened up a blank document to take notes on, setting his textbook open to the first chapter next to him, and then took a deep breath, calming himself.

This was okay; this was good. He could do this. 

“C-Cas,” came a stunned voice from the doorway, and he startled, turning to look.

Brilliant green eyes stared back at him.

“Dean,” he breathed, frozen for a second, then he was out of his seat and flying down the aisle, wrapping his arms around the man who’d saved his life. Dean was warm and solid, and his arms came and wrapped around Cas, encompassing him in a feeling of safety and security.

“God,” Dean laughed, “It’s so good to see you!”

“Mhmm,” Cas agreed, not wanting to let go of Dean yet.

“Hey,” Dean said, disentangling himself, “You wanna go get coffee sometime?”

Cas considered. “I think I’d like that very much.”

***

Weekly coffee dates turned into biweekly study dates turned into “Hey Cas, you wanna go to dinner with me?”

Dinner was lovely. It was at a tiny Italian place, Papa Gjorgjo’s, the sort of place that had exposed brick walls as part of the decor, and heavy wooden furniture with white tablecloths and low lighting, and oil paintings hung around.

Cas looked at Dean across the table, past the burning taper candle, and smiled. The candlelight highlighted Dean’s freckles perfectly, spreading burnished gold across his face, and he looked positively ethereal. 

***

A month later, they went back to Gjorgjo’s to celebrate passing the first semester’s finals, and Dean hesitantly leaned forward and kissed Cas across the table.

Cas kissed him back.

***

They graduated college, Cas finding a position with the Department of Human Services and Dean becoming a policeman immediately out of college.

“Hey,” Cas said, as he leaned into Dean in the front seat of Dean’s car, “We should go to Gjorgjo’s. We did just put a down payment on our very first apartment together.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Dean agreed.

A couple hours later, Cas was sitting at what had become  _ their _ table, sipping a glass of red wine (hey, he was cultured. He could do culture) when Dean slipped out of his seat, going down on one knee.

“Cas,” he began, looking nervous. “From the second I saw you, I knew you were something special. And with every second I spend with you, I fall a little bit more in love with you. You- you’re it for me, Cas. Will you marry me?”

The background chatter of the restaurant fell silent.

Gjorgjo himself, who Cas had been surprised to learn actually existed, poked his head out of the kitchen, an anticipatory smile on his kindly face.

Cas’ world narrowed down to Dean. Dean smiling hopefully at him, Dean carrying him safely away from Naomi, Dean kissing him for the first time, Dean staying up all night studying with him, Dean yelling in excitement as he got accepted onto the police force, Dean picking him up and spinning him around as fireworks exploded that time they’d climbed up onto the dorm roof to watch the July 4th celebrations.

He knew, without a doubt, that Dean was who he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

“Yes,” he breathed, eyes filling with tears. “Yes, Dean, I’d be honored.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm SORRY


End file.
